


Start Over

by Csmith728



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe- It's a Wonderful Life, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 10:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Csmith728/pseuds/Csmith728
Summary: Jughead Jones lived a quiet, solitary life in his small studio apartment in the city. He worked an office job, he came home, ate some form of take out while watching TV, and fell into a restless sleep only to wake up and do it all over again. Everyday. Wash Rinse Repeat. He did not go out on weekends. That was exactly how he liked it.What happens when one morning he wakes up with his world turned upside down and a half naked beautiful girl is cooking him breakfast NOT in his apartment, wearing nothing but one of his flannels and no recollection on how he got there?A Bughead AU...think It's A Wonderful Life but in reverse and without the Guardian Angel, just an unfortunate brownie heating incident ;)





	Start Over

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Buggies! So I've only written one other fic before for a different fandom and have kind of adapted that first fic to this universe. Feedback is super welcome since I'm fairly inexperienced, Should I continue? Hope you enjoy and thank you for reading! =)

Jughead Jones lived a quiet life. He had a steady job, an office job, doing data entry. Albeit a bit boring, it paid the bills. His dream when he was younger was a far cry from what he was actually doing, but like everything else in his life, that dream fizzled out faster than his father chased the bottle. 

His childhood was tumultuous at best, so the sense of security that came with having a recurring income, health benefits, a yearly paid vacation ( which he usually spent binge watching shows on Netflix, never leaving his couch for an unhealthy amount of hours, relishing in not having to interact with the outside world for 2 weeks and nobody questioning if he was dead ) the job definitely had its perks.

If it was monotonous so be it. 

Jughead had honed the art of living in solitude. So much so that he didn't even acknowledge the loneliness anymore. It was a rare occasion, he felt a pang of something but he shoved that feeling down before it even had a chance to surface, just like everything else that proved to be promising in his life. 

It’s not that he was being self-deprecating. It was just the truth. Jughead’s greatest accomplishment was the fact that he was surviving. 

He did not have ambitions aside from being able to pay his rent and afford his weight in burgers and fries. He did not have feelings. He did not get his hopes up about life in general. Period.

He was alive. And that was all that mattered, even if he wasn’t truly living. 

…

Jughead had moved to New York City the second he had turned 18. 

His plan of escaping the trailer park in the small town that he grew up in was the only thing that had kept him sane, the only thing that kept him from being sucked into the life that was expected of him.

Gang Life. _Crime Life._

Southside Serpent Life. _A Dead End._

He refused to be another Jones who amounted to nothing.

So his lofty ambitions left the town with him, in the middle of the night, on a grimy bus that was his carriage to a better life.

He had visions of starting out in the city as a lowly intern in some crappy newspaper or magazine, or _hell_ he’d take a temp job if it meant he could freelance to some online publication in his free time he’d take anything, all the while gradually working on his true dream of being a published author. 

Those plans were very short lived. 

His admittedly already low expectations of where his life would lead him (mostly out of habit and he had to remind himself he would be better) had taken a hit when he spent a few nights crashing on the couch of a fellow Southside escapee. He was quickly reminded of why he wanted nothing to do with his old life, sometimes you could take the man out of Southside but you couldn’t take the Southside out of the man, and he felt he was better off fending for his own.

He spent a few nights in a homeless shelter but honestly it had been favorable to staying with Mustang. Honestly, this dude’s name was _Mustang._ He felt like he was dodging a bullet getting out of there. 

He had been wrong.

He only had a small amount of cash he had been able to save up after working his butt off at one of the only garages in town everyday after school. He had been very strict with how much money he could spend until he could find a job. He had allotted himself enough money to pay for a large black coffee as his breakfast in the morning to get him through his day of apartment hunting and job searching. He’d buy something from whatever food cart he was nearest to and was cheap, he wasn't picky, for lunch. Dinner was usually a burger in a greasy diner that he came to really enjoy, that was only a few blocks from the homeless shelter. He had enough money saved for a down payment and first months rent but he didn’t want to push it. And he was doing well his first couple of days. 

It wasn’t until about a week and a half after he had arrived in the Big Apple that his already dwindling expectations had started to break him.

He was walking back to the shelter after spending a few hours at the diner, eating and writing some outlines for a potential storyline on his laptop, his only prized possession and only thing he had bothered to bring with him aside from a small duffle bag full of clothes and necessities. 

He had been walking past an alleyway, with a pace that he had picked up on as the norm in the big city, when he had heard a shriek and low muffled voices coming from the ally. He paused in his stride debating with himself, the investigative journalist in him at war with his natural awareness to _leave_ in uneasy, potentially dangerous situations. 

But then he had heard a woman cry out for help, and his basic human instincts took over before he could even acknowledge that yes he was rushing down a dark ally toward an unknown danger _what the fuck_ and before he knew it he was shouting at two men cornering a terrified looking woman.

And then they were looking at him. And he frantically motioned for the woman to flee since he now had their attention, but then they _oh no yea_ they were coming towards him and his feet weren't working properly, and the last thing he remembers is thinking that the world had a really funny way of fucking him over.

He received the beating that he had so desperately been against participating in, if he were to have wanted to join the Serpents. His fate if he hadn’t have been adamant about leaving his home. His life.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

…

Along with giving him a nasty looking black eye, busted lip, and a few badly bruised ribs the thugs had taken his bag with not only all of his money that he had so painstakingly saved, but his livelihood- his laptop. To say he was crushed was an understatement. 

He vowed to never let himself be put in that position ever again. His spirit was crushed at his lack of financial stability but he had been dealing with that his whole life living with his gang leader alcoholic father.

He had never been this low before though.

His soul was crushed. The only thing that he truly found joy in in life had been taken from him and he didn’t know how to come back from that. Sure eventually he could hopefully buy a new laptop, but that wasn’t it. All of his life’s work was on that laptop, everything he had ever written, good, bad, and in between. He would never be able to replace that. 

So he did the only thing he knew how. He survived.

And 6 years later he was still there. Existing.

…

He had an apartment in an only slightly sketchy neighborhood. He could at least walk home at night and not completely panic. He had his job and it was mind numbing but it was easy and steady and he endured it.

He got up early every weekday morning and sucked down as much coffee as time would allow before he had to leave to get to the subway in time to get to work. He did his job. He went home. He would either order something for dinner when he got home or pick something up from one of his many favorite eating spots and spend the rest of his evening on his couch either reading his book of the week or watching TV. Eventually he would fall asleep on his couch and wake up disoriented in the middle of the night and force himself onto his unmade bed in the corner of his studio apartment for the rest of his restless sleep until he had to wake up and do it all over again.

Everyday was the same. And he liked it that way. He knew what to expect.

He had approximately one friend at work (if he could call him that), a red headed ex jock named Archie who embodied the all american boy next door persona only too well, who had somehow gotten him to make very awkward small talk with him during their lunch break. 

Archie tried in vain to get him to go out with him and his girlfriend, Veronica, every Friday night.

Jughead liked Archie despite them being the opposite in every sense of the word. He surprisingly kind of enjoyed their somewhat awkward conversation. He just didn’t go out. At all. 

And he told him as much. Every Friday.

This Friday was no different. Jughead was looking forward to an exciting night of staying in, ordering the largest pizza his favorite pizza joint could offer (he’d be eating the leftovers all weekend), and binge watching a new obscure show he had just found on Netflix that he was excited to start. 

Some weekends were different and he would occasionally venture out in search of a particular book at his favorite bookstore, or he’d just ride the subway people watching. He liked people watching. He liked imagining people’s lives. He’d come up with full stories for them, perfectly drawn out backstories and hardships and successes. Sometimes they were happy and sometimes they weren’t. It depended on the day.

He figured it was his only creative outlet since he hadn’t written anything since that fateful day so many years ago. 

This weekend however there was a heavy storm expected to blow through so Jughead was perfectly content to block out the world for a few days and just exist in solitude. He had enough pizza to last him the storm and he had even splurged and ordered a pan of brownies piled high with some sinful looking toppings, and 2 liters of soda. 

Settling down with his pizza, he sat in contentment starting his show. 

The rain had started coming down only 30 minutes prior but was a nice backdrop to his evening of vegetation. He watched the first episode and being someone who truly believed you had to watch the first 3 episodes of a show before really getting a feel for it, stretched out and continued on. 

He was just about to click “continue watching” after scoffing at Netflix’s judgmental _Are you still watching?_ because really it was known fact that EVERYBODY was still watching when he remembered his brownies. He scowled at the screen unwilling to let Netflix win and hit play only to hit pause the first second in. 

He got up and grabbed the brownies frowning when he realized they were stone cold. When they had been delivered they were warm and gooey and looked delicious and he had really been looking forward to digging in but he was an adult enough to know he should eat real food before dessert.

Pizza was real food. If ordered right it had all of the food groups.

He sighed resigned to eating cold brownies, knowing they would be satisfying either way, when he had a thought. He had a toaster oven. He could heat these up couldn’t he? He knew enough not to put the entire container in the microwave since it was laying in a tinfoil pan (he wasn’t about to do that again). And he knew himself enough to know 1. that trying to separate the brownies and microwaving just one would be messy and 2. who was he kidding he’d eat half the pan in one sitting. 

So he rustled around in his tiny, what could barely be called a kitchen, and procured a dusty old convention oven that one of his neighbors had offered him in a rare occasion that they were crossing paths because he was moving out and didn’t need it. 

Silently sending his old neighbor a good thought for being a brownie savior, he surveyed his options on where to plug it up, already mentally running through vague basic cooking knowledge that he had no experience using. 

Choosing a plug to the right of him on the counter, one he rarely used because lets face it he rarely used anything in here, he perched the oven on the counter and made to plug it in.

In a sick twist of fate, as if he hadn’t suffered enough from her throughout his life, the exact same second he pushed the prongs into the socket a loud clap of thunder reverberated throughout the apartment and a massive flash of lightening struck the side of his building making sparks fly from somewhere. He wasn’t too sure exactly what was happening because suddenly there was a flash of pain in his hand traveling up his arm with the oddest tingling sensation running through his body, lights flickered and dimmed and everything suddenly went black. 

…

Jughead woke up to the sound and smell of bacon frying. 

He smiled in contentment because who doesn’t love waking up to the smell of bacon in the morning? It was one of the most comforting smells in the entire world. He had rare fond memories of his mother cooking bacon and eggs and pancakes for him, his sister, and his father on weekend mornings, before everything went to shit…

His stomach grumbled as he took a deep breath in, relishing in the fatty aroma of the…

_wait, hang on…_

Jughead shot up in his bed.

His heart was pounding in his ears as he was trying to clear his head from the last dregs of sleep. 

Someone was in his kitchen cooking bacon, and it was clearly not him. He didn’t have any bacon, let alone _anyone to cook him bacon_. Who the fuck is in his kitchen?

And then in more panic _SERIOUSLY who the ever loving fuck is in his kitchen? And COOKING? How?_

Jughead got out of bed as quietly as he could. It was then that he realized that he didn’t recognize his surroundings. For one, this wasn’t his bed or his room. He’d be in his kitchen by now if he was in his apartment because they were practically the same room. Everything in the room was a soft neutral color, bright and white and completely opposite of his dark grungy aesthetic that he was secretly proud of. 

Heart racing, he chanced a door at the end of the room that thankfully opened to a hallway. He padded down the hall with silent feet so as not to tip off the intruder. 

_Or was he the intruder? Can you be an intruder if you don’t know how you got there?_

Jughead stopped at the end of the hall and peered over the corner through the living room and into the kitchen. What he saw made his blood run cold. 

Standing in the kitchen appeared to be a woman about his age. She had golden blonde hair that was messily thrown up in a bun on top of her head and was dressed in nothing but a blue and green flannel shirt that hung just low enough to cover her backside, barely concealing any of the smooth skin that seemed to glow in the morning light streaming through the living room windows on the opposite side of the apartment. She was wearing his flannel, he knew his flannels. Jughead couldn’t tell if she was wearing underwear but he knew for sure she wasn’t wearing pants. 

Just as he was admonishing himself for getting distracted when he was in a foreign apartment looking at a _pants less stranger_ the girl started dancing, swaying her hips back and forth whipping the spatula through the air for emphasis. She was softly singing along to some tune.

Jughead could now hear the music playing through speakers coming from somewhere in the apartment, not too loud but he recognized some pop song from some band that Archie had been raving about at work. He was trying to get Jughead to go with him to a concert that had been coming up in a few weeks, and _pssh like that was ever going to happen…_

Jughead was brought out of his internal downward spiral of his thoughts on just how ludicrous it was that Archie was trying to get him to go to this concert as if he would ever, when the girl did some crazy dance move that involved some sort of pumping fist and shake of her ass that looked absolutely ridiculous that even he couldn’t help but chuckle at. She was getting more into the song as the bridge built and he lost all train of thought as the girl started using the spatula as a mic. He was so lost and confused but also captivated. Before he could prepare himself, she spun while belting out the chorus and caught him looking at her wide eyed. 

_Shit._

Panic ran through him once again. Temporarily forgotten by the sheer bizarreness (and let’s be real dorkiness) of the scene in front of him, it was back hitting Jughead full force. He locked eyes with mystery girl and stood frozen in place his only thought _Wow. She’s beautiful._

The girl, however, broke out into a wide grin.

“Hey babe, you’re up! I was just making us breakfast. You were so quiet, I didn’t even hear you get out of bed, I hope I didn’t wake you up! I know you were up late working last night”, and with that she turned back to her bacon, flipping it making sure it was completely cooked before piling it on a plate. 

Jughead was still standing stock still unsure of what to do. 

_Babe?._ ..what the...is this girl out of her mind...

Jughead began to fear for his life because something clearly wrong was happening here. No way this girl was right in her mind. No way was _he._

“Juggie can you get the butter for me I have to start stirring the batter for the pancakes otherwise they wont turn out fluffy like you like…”, the blonde haired girl asked sweetly, glancing over her shoulder at him, checking that he heard her. 

_Juggie?_

He hadn’t heard anyone use that nickname in years. It shocked his system and made him even more confused. How did she know his name?

The girl looked over at him while he started to have a silent panic attack. 

“Babe?”, she looked at him so concerned.

Jughead gave her a fleeting look before something caught his eye on the other side of the room. 

It was a picture frame hanging on the wall of the living room. There were a couple of frames actually, now that he really looked, scattered all over the walls. Most were pictures of him with the girl cooking breakfast in not his kitchen like he hadn’t just woken up in an alternate universe. 

One was of them at a park smiling on a bench. Arms wrapped around each other. 

Another was taken at what seemed to be a museum, beautifully colored artwork surrounding them. Jughead had his arms wrapped around her from behind as she was looking at a painting, but he was looking at her with more reverence than any of the paintings. 

One had the girl kissing his cheek, while he was pretending to scowl at something but his eyes were twinkling. He didn’t even know his eyes _could_ twinkle. Others had some with what he assumed to be her family. They all looked alike. They were at a picnic. At the beach. At some sort of social event.

There was one that was a little more thematic of the girl leaning over a classic looking car with the hood popped, grease smudge and coy smile on her face. It was clearly professionally taken and had captured the same playful, sexy energy he had seen watching her dancing just now. 

The one that had originally caught Jughead’s eye however was the most striking of them all. It was larger than the rest, the focal point. It was mystery girl, he was pretty sure, and she was wearing a long billowy black dress. She was posed face tilted up toward the sun, and she looked ethereal. She was surrounded by the most beautiful scenery, a large expanse of land that was covered in bright yellow flowers that made her figure that much more prominent. He didn’t even realize he had made his way over to the framed photograph until he was right in front of it. His eyes swept over the photograph taking in everything until he noticed one small detail in the bottom right corner, a signature on the edge of the bright white mat encircling the image. 

_His signature._

How was all of this happening? _What_ was happening?

Jughead started to pale and the girl, who had made her way to stand next to him, noticed. She had already started asking if he was ok, when Jughead took off back down the hallway mumbling an, “ I don’t feel well”, over his shoulder before rushing back into the room he woke up in and finding the other door that he hoped was a bathroom. For once luck was on his side and he flung himself in slamming the door to the bathroom shut. Jughead slumped over the toilet and heaved. 

_What the fuck?_

+++  
++  
+

**Author's Note:**

> Again thanks for reading! Let me know what you think! And just a warning there will be angsty parts but this will mostly be full of fluffy goodness =)


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